NAME

cpuid - x86 CPUID access device

DESCRIPTIONS

CPUID provides an interface for querying information about the x86 CPU.
This device is accessed by lseek(2) or pread(2) to the appropriate
CPUID level and reading in chunks of 16 bytes. A larger read size
means multiple reads of consecutive levels.
The lower 32 bits of the file position is used as the incoming %eax,
and the upper 32 bits of the file position as the incoming %ecx, the
latter intended for "counting" eax levels like eax=4.
This driver uses /dev/cpu/CPUNUM/cpuid, where CPUNUM is the minor
number, and on an SMP box will direct the access to CPU CPUNUM as
listed in /proc/cpuinfo.
This file is protected so that it can only be read by the user root, or
members of the group root.

NOTES

The CPUID instruction can be directly executed by a program using
inline assembler. However this device allows convenient access to all
CPUs without changing process affinity.
Most of the information in cpuid is reported by the kernel in cooked
form either in /proc/cpuinfo or through subdirectories in
/sys/devices/system/cpu. Direct CPUID access through this device
should only be used in exceptional cases.
The cpuid driver is not auto-loaded. On modular kernels you might need
to use the following command to load it explicitly before use:
$ modprobecpuid
There is no support for CPUID functions that require additional input
registers.
Very old x86 CPUs don’t support CPUID.